The suspect continues to call Uncas crime protocol – the blue banner –

Many entries in Unc Asheville's crime protocol are not at all for crimes, but for suspicious people and suspicious vehicle calls.

“There is no stupid question and there is no stupid report,” said Detective Sgt. Whitney Montgomery from the Unca Campus Police.

In the 3,457 entries, which are listed between February 1, 2018 and March 4 at the Unca campus crime thriller, and the word “suspicious” appears 1,039 times. While some mentions of suspects or vehicles accompany other fees for the protocol, the vast majority of this is not.

Montgomery, who has been with the campus police for more than eight years, said what is considered suspicious, is a relative question, but not one that reduces the importance of this calls to campus security.

“What may be suspicious for you is not suspicious, but that doesn't mean that it is not serious to us as an agency,” said the detective. “We have to respect if our students or our community members find strange to someone, and it could be criminal.”

Volker Frank, a sociology professor who has been with Unca since the mid -1990s, said that the concept of a suspect was a by -product of our complex social relationship with strangers.

“The label, suspect person, is a compromise between an innocent person and an criminal. It is a suspect person who could become a criminal very well or could only be a normal person,” he said. “This reflects the ambiguity that we have as a society towards the stranger.”

According to Frank, individuals give strangers a massive trust at certain times. This is the case with therapists and doctors. However, he said at a young age that we teach our children not to speak to strangers and to consider them as others and to contribute to the natural suspicion of contemporary society of the stranger.

“The stranger is not part of a community. People of the community know whether there is a non -member,” said the professor.

Frank said that the social norms that prescribe what is acceptable for members of a community could have recently become more unclear and contribute to an imperfect understanding and treatment of outsiders.

“It is quite possible that the norms will become more arbitrary, which is a problem for a society, since a society wants norms that are applicable, are obvious and apply to everyone in the same way,” said Frank. “It was never the case anyway, but modern society expects that.”

Montgomery cannot be able to present statistics on this matter, said that suspicious person or vehicle calls sometimes lead to further charges or police measures. On the other hand, this is not always the case. In certain contexts, the telecommunications team of the armed forces can contact relevant parties to ensure whether police measures are actually necessary.

“There are numerous calls in which someone finds something suspicious that does not justify the law enforcement authorities' interaction,” said Montgomery. “But that does not mean that we will always justify us to approach the person who found them suspicious, since we may have received the Backend information from a professional evaluation that we can clarify that it is not a misconduct.”

In view of the frequency of these types of calls, some can be concerned about the social effects of police confrontations with those who are considered suspicious, especially if they are innocent.

Logan Byrd, an Unc Asheville senior who studies psychology, said that interactions between law enforcement authorities and non -criminals can still have disadvantaged consequences. For some, including members of a minority group and those who have experienced poor police encounters in the past, there can still be a clear message.

“Especially under certain circumstances that are about racist prejudices, then it would still communicate something, even if the cases are non -violent. It's like” you don't belong here, “said Byrd.

While Byrd agreed that the response to calls on suspicious behavior contributes to the security of the campus and the feelings of security for those who may be concerned, he also said that society can enable sudden reactions to the behavior of foreign and not thoughtful considerations.

“I think we are conditioned on a certain level to feel uncomfortable with things that we are not familiar with and maybe not feel uncomfortable in a reflective sense,” said UNC Asheville student.

Despite potential concerns about what counts as suspicious behavior, Montgomery said that the campus police support inclusivity in addition to campus security.

“This is a diverse community and we are proud of it. We all greet. I do not think that they work in this community and cannot prioritize that the profiles are reserved for a law enforcement application,” she said.

According to Montgomery, the agency has taken steps to promote more constructive interactions between civil servants and the public.

“First and foremost, it is the main goal of the agency that all of our officers are trained in a course for crisis interventions,” she said.

Montgomery said they want to complete the 40-hour course every new officer within their first year. The training continues with a course of de -escalation and interaction with those who go through a psychological health crisis. Cumulative she said that officials visit hundreds of hours of training per year and go beyond what is legally necessary.

Frank said it was immensely difficult to statistically analyze the effects of law enforcement authorities with people who are considered suspicious as a whole. Depending on the circumstances, the agency of individual civil servants and departments allows certain interactions that differ greatly from each other.

“It is very difficult to say that the police always or the police never never because there is an enormous variety of diversity between every single police department,” he said.

Regardless of the immense number of variables, Frank said that the awareness and mere existence of the suspect's category serve as an investigation of how our communities react to unknownity.

“In a way, a suspect represents several things: the hysterical, uncertain and contradictory nature of modern society,” said Frank.